SC - coffe and tea at events

[david friedman]

At 6:16 AM -0500 1/24/98, Mordonnade wrote:

>But I will not give up the coffee pot, nor the tea pot.  My primary
>responsibility is to my House, and suiting their tastes is more important than
>my ego.

I am not saying that you should. Each of us makes his own compromises
between authenticity and other things of value.

I am arguing against viewing it as something that is "not practical in the
current Middle Ages" as opposed to something that you have not yet figured
out a practical way of doing. The problem with ruling things out is that
you stop trying to figure out how to do them.

Consider this case. If instead of treating events without modern drinks as
out of the question you think of it as a desirable objective that you have
not yet figured out a practical way of achieving, the obvious next step is
to look for period substitutes. There are, after all, period hot drinks.
You could experiment with offering your people some of them in addition to
their coffee and tea. If you're lucky, you eventually find substitutes that
they like and can drop the modern drinks. If you aren't lucky, you have
still learned something interesting about medieval drinks and life.

An example of just this pattern is sekanjabin, which has now become a  well
established element of SCA culture in many areas. I started pushing it
because I wanted a period substitute for iced tea. Hardened leather, as an
(I think) increasingly popular substitute for Kydex, is another.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/


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